Tory chairman Greg Hands was left squirming on live radio over the lack of progress Rishi Sunak has made on his five pledges to voters.
The prime minister has promised to halve inflation, cut NHS waiting lists, grow the economy, bring down debt and stop small boats carrying asylum seekers the English Channel from France.
But inflation remains over 10%, waiting lists are at record lengths, economic growth has flatlined, debt remains high and the boats are still coming.
Appearing on Iain Dale’s LBC show last night, Hands was roasted over Sunak’s failures.
As the Tory chairman described cutting inflation as “a work in progress”, Dale told him: “That’s not going very well, is it?”
He added: “What was second one? Reducing debt - that’s not going very well.
″Increasing growth, that’s not going very well. Reducing debt isn’t going very well.”
When Hands said the fourth pledge was stopping the boats, Dale said: “That’s not going very well.”
And on reducing hospital waiting lists, Dale said: “That’s not going very well at all, so you’re not making much progress on any of those, are you?”
Hands replied: “They’re designed to be quite tough challenges, and they’re designed to be a stretch. The prime minister is dedicated those - they are his priorities, they are the people’s priorities.
“That is what we are getting on with, but nobody pretended that meeting those five priorities was going to be easy.”
But Dale said the PM was “running out of electoral road”.
“An election has to be called within roughly the next 18 months,” he said. “If you haven’t shown signs of real progress on all of those within the next six months, you’re going to run out of time.”